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But the self-satisfied artist did not hear this talk and gloried in his universal fame, throwing his gold coins around and beginning to believe that everything on earth is ordinary and simple, that there is no such thing as a revelation from on high, and that everything must of necessity be subsumed under a strict order of tidiness and monotony. His life was reaching the years when everything that breathes of impulse begins to shrink within a person, when the powerful violin bow reaches the soul more faintly and does not twine about the heart with piercing sounds, when contact with beauty no longer transforms virginal powers into fire and flame, but all the burned-out feelings become more open to the sound of gold, listen more attentively to its alluring music, and little by little, imperceptibly, allow it to put them completely to sleep. Fame cannot satiate and give enjoyment to one who has stolen it and not earned it; it produces a constant excitement only in one who is worthy of it. And so all his feelings and impulses turned toward gold. Gold became his passion, his ideal, his terror, his enjoyment, and his goal. Bundles of banknotes grew in his chests. And like everyone who is given this terrible gift, he became boring, closed to everything and indifferent to everything. It seemed that he was ready to turn into one of those strange creatures who are sometimes encountered in the world, at whom a person full of energy and passion looks with horror, and who seem to him like living bodies that contain corpses within themselves. But a certain event powerfully shook him and gave his life a completely different turn.
Pure, unsullied, beautiful as a bride, the artist’s work stood before him. And if only the slightest desire to shine, if only a perhaps excusable vanity, if only a thought of showing itself off to the mob had been evident there—no, not a one! It rose up humbly. It was simple, innocent, and divine, like talent, like genius. The amazingly beautiful figures grouped themselves without constraint, freely, without touching the canvas, and, amazed by so many gazes directed at them, seemed to bashfully lower their beautiful eyelashes. In the divine features of the faces breathed those secret phenomena that the soul cannot, does not, know how to recount to another person; that which was expressed lay inexpressibly on them; and all this was tossed onto the canvas so easily, so humbly and freely, that it seemed to be the fruit of the artist’s momentary inspiration, a thought that had suddenly dawned upon him. The whole painting was—an instant, but an instant for which a whole human life is nothing but preparation. Involuntary tears were ready to roll down the faces of the visitors surrounding the painting. It seemed that all tastes, all bold, irregular deviations of taste, were merged into a silent hymn to the divine work. Motionless, with mouth open, Chertkov stood in front of the painting, and finally, when the visitors and experts began little by little to stir and to discuss the merits of the work, and when they finally turned to him and asked him to make his thoughts known, he regained consciousness. He wanted to assume an ordinary, indifferent air, wanted to offer the usual sort of banal opinion that stale, hard-hearted artists express: that the work was good and the artist’s talent was evident, but that one would wish for the idea and the finishing to be better executed in many places—but the words died on his lips, tears and sobs broke out discordantly in answer, and like a madman he ran out of the hall.
Lieutenant Pirogov made up his mind not to abandon his quest, despite the fact that the German woman had given him an explicit rebuff. He could not understand how it was possible to resist him, all the more since his amiability and brilliant rank gave him full rights to her attention. One must, however, say that Schiller’s wife, for all her comeliness, was very stupid. But stupidity is a particularly charming feature in a pretty wife. At least I’ve known many husbands who are enraptured by the stupidity of their wives and see in it all the signs of an infantile innocence. Beauty works perfect miracles. All spiritual defects in a beautiful woman, instead of evoking revulsion, become unusually attractive; in these women, vice itself breathes with comeliness; but let beauty disappear—and the woman must be twenty times more intelligent than a man in order to inspire if not love then at least respect. But for all her stupidity, Schiller’s wife was always true to her obligations, and therefore it was fairly difficult for Pirogov to succeed in his bold undertaking. But there is always a certain enjoyment involved in overcoming obstacles, and the blonde became more interesting to him from day to day. He began to come quite frequently to inquire about his spurs, so that Schiller finally got sick of it. He made every effort to finish making the spurs as soon as possible. Finally they were ready.
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In the German cities he was somewhat struck by the strange formation of the German’s body, deprived of the shapely harmony of beauty, the feeling for which is innate to the Italian breast; the German language also struck unpleasantly on his musical ear. But already he saw the French border before him, and his heart shuddered. The fluttering sounds of the fashionable European language caressed and kissed his hearing. With secret pleasure he caught their slippery rustle, which back in Italy had seemed to him something lofty, purified of all convulsive movements of the kind that accompany the powerful languages of the southern people, who do not know how to keep themselves within bounds. An even greater impression was made on him by a particular sort of woman—ethereal and fluttering. He was struck by this evanescent creature with her barely defined ethereal forms, with her small foot, with her slender airy figure, with the responsive fire in her gazes, and with her ethereal, almost unarticulated speeches. He awaited Paris with impatience, populated it with towers, palaces, created his own image of it, and finally, with trembling heart, he caught sight of the imminent signs of the capital city: glued-up posters, gigantic letters, multiplying post chaises, omnibuses… finally the houses of the faubourg began to fly by.
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In the movement of trade, the intellect, everywhere, in everything, he saw only a strained effort and striving for newness. One person endeavored with all his might to gain the upper hand over another, if only for one moment. The merchant used all his capital for the decoration of his store alone, in order to entice the crowd with brilliance and magnificence. Book literature resorted to illustrations and typographical luxury in order to attract people’s cooled attention. Stories and novels endeavored to seize the reader with the strangeness of unheard-of passions, the monstrosity of exceptions to human nature. Everything seemed to insolently obtrude itself and offer itself without being invited, like a lewd woman who tries to catch a man on the street; everything tried to stretch its hand higher than the others, like a surrounding crowd of annoying beggars. In scholarship itself, in its inspired lectures, the merit of which he could not help but acknowledge, he now noticed everywhere the desire to show off, to boast, to display oneself; everywhere there were brilliant episodes, but not the solemn, majestic flow of the entire whole. Everywhere there were efforts to raise up facts that had not before been noticed and to give them a huge influence, sometimes to the detriment of the harmony of the whole, in order to keep for oneself the honor of a discovery; finally, almost everywhere there was audacious self-assurance and nowhere the humble consciousness of one’s own ignorance—and he recalled a verse with which the Italian Alfieri, in a caustic spiritual mood, had reproached the French:
[...] The very acts of the clergy, which are often seductive and in other places would engender debauchery, have almost no effect on the Italian people: They know how to separate religion from its hypocritical practitioners and have not been infected by the cold idea of unbelief. [...]
Finally, the whole crowd moved forward, behind the daredevil and the deceased poet; the chain of carriages started to move, which made him very happy, although the movement of the people had knocked off his hat, which he now rushed to pick up. After he picked up his hat, he also raised his eyes and was rooted to the spot: Before him stood an unheard-of beauty. She was wearing a shining Albano costume, in a row with two other beautiful women, who compared with her as the night to the day. This was a miracle in the highest degree. Everything had to turn darker in the presence of this brilliance. Looking at her, it became clear why Italian poets compared beautiful women to the sun. This truly was the sun, complete beauty. Everything that is scattered and gleams separately in the beauties of the world, all this was gathered together here. Glancing at her chest and bosom, it became obvious what was lacking in the chests and bosoms of other beauties. Compared to her thick, gleaming hair, all other hair would seem sparse and dull. Her arms existed in order to turn everyone into an artist—like an artist, he would have looked at them eternally, not daring to breathe. Compared to her legs, the legs of Englishwomen, German women, French women, and the women of all other nations would seem like splinters of wood; only the ancient sculptors had retained the lofty idea of their beauty in their statues. This was complete beauty, created in order to blind all and sundry!
When the street had been cleared of the train, the prince saw that it would be foolish and too late to run after the cart, and moreover he didn’t know which roads it was now rushing along. Nevertheless, he could not give up the idea of seeking her out. That radiant laughter and the open lips with marvelous rows of teeth floated in his imagination. “It is the brilliance of lightning, not a woman,” he kept repeating to himself and at the same time added: “She is a Roman. Such a woman could be born only in Rome. I must see her without fail. I want to see her not in order to love her, no—I wish only to look at her, to look at all of her, to look at her eyes, to look at her arms, at her fingers, at her gleaming hair. I wish not to kiss her, but only to look at her. And what of that? After all, that’s how it must be, it’s in the law of nature; she has no right to hide and carry away her beauty. Complete beauty is given to the world in order for everyone to see it, in order that everyone would preserve the idea of it eternally in their hearts. If she were simply beautiful, and not such supreme perfection, she would have the right to belong to one person, she could be carried off to a desert and hidden from the world. But complete beauty must be seen by everyone. Does an architect build a magnificent temple in a cramped lane? No, he places it on an open square, so that people can look at it from all sides and be amazed at it. Is a lamp lit, said the Divine Teacher, so that one would hide it and put it under a table? No, the lamp is lit in order to stand on the table, so that everyone can see, so that everyone can move by its light. No, I must see her without fail.”41
But here the prince glanced at Rome and stopped: Before him, in a marvelous, shining panorama, the eternal city appeared. The whole bright heap of houses, churches, domes, and sharp spires was powerfully illuminated by the brilliance of the sinking sun. In groups and singly, the houses, roofs, statues, airy terraces, and galleries emerged out from behind one another; over there was the motley mass of bell towers and domes with their delicate tops, playing in the patterned caprice of the lamps; over there a dark palace emerged in its entirety; over there was the flat dome of the Pantheon; over there was the ornamented top of the Antonino column with its capital and the statue of the apostle Paul; over to the right rose the tops of the Capitoline buildings, with horses and statues; even farther to the right, over the brilliant crowd of houses and roofs, the dark breadth of the Colosseum’s bulk rose majestically and austerely; over there was again a playful crowd of walls, terraces, and domes, covered in the blinding brilliance of the sun.47 And over this whole sparkling mass, the tops of the holm oaks from the villas of the Ludovisi and the Medici showed darkly in the distance with their black foliage, and above them in the air the dome-shaped crowns of the Roman stone pines, raised on their slender trunks, stood in a whole flock. And along the whole length of the picture towered the light-blue, transparent hills, as light as air, embraced by a kind of phosphorescent light. Neither word nor brush would be able to convey the marvelous harmony and the combination of all the levels of this picture. The air was so pure and transparent that the tiniest little feature of the distant buildings was clear, and everything seemed so close that you could grab it with your hand. The last petty architectural ornament, the patterned decoration of the cornice—everything was marked out with an incomprehensible purity. At that moment the shot of a cannon and the distant merged shout of the mass of people resounded—the sign that the riderless horses had already run by, marking the end of the Carnival day.48 The sun was sinking lower toward the earth; its brilliance showed a brighter scarlet on the whole architectural mass; the city became more vivid and closer; the stone pines became a darker black; the hills became even bluer and more phosphorescent; the heavenly air, ready to be extinguished, became more solemn and beautiful… My God, what a view! The prince, in its embrace, forgot himself, and the beauty of Annunziata, and the mysterious fate of his people, and everything that exists in the world.
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Akaky Akakievich thought and thought, and decided that he would have to reduce his usual expenses for at least one year: to banish the drinking of tea in the evenings, not to light candles in the evenings, and if he needed to do something, to go to the landlady’s room and work by the light of her little candle; as he walked along the street, to step as lightly and carefully as he could along the cobblestones and flagstones, almost on tiptoe, so as not to wear out his soles too fast; to give his linen to the laundress as rarely as possible, and so as not to wear it out, to take it off as soon as he came home and remain in just a thick cotton robe that was very old and had been spared by time itself. One must speak the truth and say that at first it was rather difficult for him to get used to such limitations, but then it seemed to become a habit and things got better. He even got accustomed to going hungry in the evenings; but to make up for it he was nourished spiritually, bearing in his thoughts the eternal idea of the future overcoat. From that time it was as if his very existence became somehow fuller, as if he had gotten married, as if some other person was present with him, as if he was not alone, but a pleasant female life companion had agreed to follow life’s path along with him—and that companion was none other than the thickly padded overcoat with a strong lining showing no trace of wear.
:'(